


The Old World

by Lil_Bel



Category: The Walking Dead (TV)
Genre: And in the fullness of time, Death comes by old age, Don't worry, Gen, not by zombie or human violence
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-06-10
Updated: 2015-06-10
Packaged: 2018-04-03 20:01:18
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,732
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4113147
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lil_Bel/pseuds/Lil_Bel
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>An old man lays dying.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Old World

**Author's Note:**

> Lil Asskicker is 44 years old and Carl is 56.

When she looked up from her reverie the room's big windows had lightened to a brooding, wintry gray.

Judith Grimes had been sitting at this bedside for most of the last three days and nights; and now, one more morning. How many more? Would the end come today?

Other people came and went as the hours marched on, but where else should she be but here?

Her husband, Chris, was with her. And her three children (the youngest just turned 16!), as they should be. The kids had known the man who lay dying all their lives. They owed those lives to him. Without him? Without him there would be no her.

His impending loss was as excruciating for her as her dad's had been. The doctor said there was nothing to be done for it--Daryl Dixon's body was simply giving out from hard use and old age.

And in her opinion, stoically pining for the main thing missing from his life: the sun in his sky, his best friend, his husband, his king... Her father, Rick Grimes.

Daryl Dixon had lived with Rick as lover and partner, second parent to Rick's children, for over forty years, and would out-live him by barely 13 months. Just couldn’t stand to go on without him, everybody supposed, the way it is with old couples. She knew that her father’s clothes, his shoes, still resided in that dresser over there and in that closet.

The terrain of this room they'd shared had become such a familiar place to her over the hours. The room smelled of old polished wood and leather, and somehow, always, the forest Daryl loved, the breath of trees and old leaf litter and earth.

Her eye traveled over the big rustic bed with the blue and white handmade quilt covering him, things like Daryl's clay pipes and tobacco pouch on the dresser, their mingled books and keepsakes on the shelves. His oldest crossbow hung up on the wall above the headboard.

No doubt the pair had laughed and cried in here, made passionate love in that bed, argued, woke up to each other. With Daryl her father had found miraculous new love after her mother Lori's death, a soulmate, too. Neither had ever chosen another, and nobody she'd ever known--through the years of plague, through the aftermath, and all the years of peace since--questioned their belonging to each other. She'd never felt the lack of the mother she never knew.

The earth turned a little more, and it was as if she could feel every ounce of its weight.

And Daryl moved, sighed, opened narrow eyes that were still clear as a child's, warm sea-blue. He called a name softly, head moving on his pillow. "Rick... Rick, where you at?"

She'd hoped all along that at some point he'd rouse from his death-sleep and speak; all this time there'd been only the slow stride of his breathing, measures of time passing, life leaving and dragging its feet. Now he was asking for his Rick, and to have to hear that was liable to break Judith's heart.

"It's me, Papa," she said, leaning over him. "It's your Judy."

"Why you cryin', pretty girl?" Keen glance finding her, he chuckled, dry and weak. "Somebody fixin' to die 'round here?" He knew.

She laughed, too. "I'm just so happy to see you. All of us are. Carl's here and Enid. My husband Chris. And all our kids, Carl's four and my three; all grown up."

"Well, that's sure nice. Like to see 'em." His attention wandered past her to Carl who'd just come in, perhaps having heard Daryl speak from out in the hallway. He leaned forward over the bed, hand coming to rest on Daryl's shoulder, smiling sadly, eyes red-rimmed but dry. "Pop! Waitin' for you to get up out of this damned bed and go huntin' with me! Saw a 16-point buck the other day up on the saddleback; had our names on it."

"Sounds good. Would go, but I just been thinkin' I've hunted my last. Don't think I could get up to the saddleback no more." He sounded so fragile, taking two breaths, even three, between sentences.

"Sure you could," Carl scoffed, gently.

"Don't let me keep you, though. Go get 'im. Somebody's got to feed all these folks."

"No need to worry about that anymore," Carl told him, kindly. "There's plenty for everybody."

"Good. Maybe we can stay here a little longer."

They'd all been living for nearly 30 years in the town Rick and his people had established, but Daryl seemed to be wandering through memories now.

"Dreamt about Rick," he told them. "Had somethin' I wanted to tell him only I couldn't find him. And I's just lookin' and lookin' for 'im, everywhere, up and down..." He sighed then pleaded, "Where is he?" Judith and Carl looked at each other, helpless. "I miss him."

Carl nodded, eyes fixed on Daryl, and Judith swallowed tears, trying to quench the burning of grief. "Me, too."

Daryl's blue eyes were distant, brow furled, as if remembering and troubled by his memories. "Couldn't help it; I wanted him. My heart settled on him, and his on me. He loved Lori, but I was the one who'd walk into Hell for him."

"He knew that," Carl reassured.

"He's so sweet... Heart so good. Needs to be loved. Needs somebody just for him. Needs me..."

Here, for a moment, like a slender beam of light in a dark wood, Judith was given a gift; a tiny window into their love story. The rest of it would soon be lost to time, forever known only to the two involved. And maybe that was right. Felt right.

"I gotta go," Daryl said with sudden determination, beginning to move restlessly, as if trying to sit up. She pressed him back gently as he tried to prop himself up on an elbow.

"You lie back here, Papa! Doctor wouldn't want you exerting yourself." Carl moved to assist, as tenderly as he could.

"But Rick's right there, Judy! 'Cross that little stream, sittin' on the bank over there, under them river birches. You don't see him? What the hell?! 'Thout so much as a fingernail file to protect himself. I gotta talk to him." He continued trying hard to catch his breath. "Been lookin' for him all day! And I'm tired..."

Judith quieted suddenly, inside. Suddenly she understood; maybe he needed help to let go. This was the way it could end. "Well, go to him then," she said, softly, smiling down at him. "He's waitin' for you."

Lying back Daryl blinked slowly and studied her. He nodded. Then he lifted his hand and gave her a slow, big-handed caress of hair and cheek. She was the one he said goodbye to. His hand came down and his eyes closed. And as quietly as that, with a deep sigh, Daryl Dixon was gone from life.

So sudden, so quiet. Grief rose in her and she found herself inconsolable, falling forward. Lying against him now, arm across his still breast, she kissed his cheek, pressed her face tight to his. “Papa! Papa, no! No, Papa!” 

He'd been a second father to her, all her life he had been there, loving her and her brother like they were his own blood. But she’d always felt that to Daryl she was special. He had been protecting her, teaching her, preserving her life before she even knew herself... He'd named her Lil Asskicker--after the Big Asskicker himself, Rick.

Always she’d thought of him as her angel. Her Dare, her Papa... How could he be gone?

To her weeping eyes he was...beautiful in death. He looked like an old-testament patriarch, snow-white hair, snow-white beard, completely at peace.

And radiating a kind of purity, a simple plain sanctity that had never been a part of the real, profane man whose shell this now was, but was part of him now. Forever.

If there was any man in the world guaranteed a place in heaven, at the feet of God himself, it was Daryl Dixon, just passed away at the age of 83, peacefully in his own bed.

Death could ask no more of him than his life had.

He'd survived it all. Not only an abusive father who'd left him scarred for life inside and out, a weak and abused mother who'd allowed it and then died on him early, a dirt-poor childhood with all the hardships brought along with that, cold and hunger and deprivation, but the brutal, and thankfully now ended, zombie plague. In his time, he'd also faced and fought off the very worst the human species had to offer.

And though he was gruff and had never suffered fools gladly, somehow he was--and remained always--a giving soul. In death, he'd be sincerely mourned by all the souls in their community. They wouldn't see his like again.

Carl had said it that first day they'd all been gathered around this bed to keep the old man company, see him through his time of dying. Carl had maintained hope until he was faced with the fact of an end. “The only thing that can kill Daryl is Daryl.”

Carl sat back down in the chair beside the head of the bed, head down. "Think he's found Dad?"

"Without a doubt."

"You believe that?"

"I believe it. I've got to. The universe couldn't be that cruel."

"Not to him," Carl mused. "Best person I've ever known." He swiped a hand across his face, tears in his eyes. "They're both gone. Really on our own, now," he said, thickly. "Ain't we, Judy?"

She was wiping her own eyes and nose dry with a handkerchief. "Yeah. It's up to us, now. All of it. Everything they left us. Keep it, fight for it... And our kids after us."

"And so on," Carl said. "They gave that to us."

"And so on."

The bell of the church at the end of the main street (in this town they'd built on the ruins of the old world), began to ring, resonating across the surrounding wooded hills and the fertile fields. A time had ended and a time begun. The best of the old world had passed away and a new one--now with a clearer shape--would take its place.


End file.
